Friday, 14 November 2014

A short Biography of Birsa Munda

On the day of Birsa Munda Jainty Written by Basudeb Pal (Mobile : 9674514952)

During the colonial
phase of India there was a hero who had the courage to fight against the might
of the British Raj and his leadership was so sincere that people joined his
struggle without a second thought. This great hero was Birsa Munda.

Early Life: Schooling,
Christianity and first Revolt

Birsa was born in
Bamba, a suburb of Ranchi (Now Jharkhand) on 15 November, 1875. The son of poor
parents Sugna Munda and Karmi Hatu, he grew up around the forests of Bohonda,
grazing sheep and dancing in the akhara. He also developed an interest in
playing the flute. He went round with the tuila (one-stringed
instrument made from pumpkin) in the hand and the flute strung to his waist.
Due to abject poverty, his father had to move from place to place looking for
work, which caused Birsa to move to Ayubhatu, his maternal uncle’s village
where he stayed for two years.

He went to school at
Salga, run by one Jaipal Nag. There he came in contact with a pracharak who
visited a few families in the village which had been converted to Christianity
and attacked the old Munda order. As he was sharp in studies, Jaipal Nag
recommended him to join German Mission School in Burj, Chaibasa.

Since converting to
Christianity was obligatory to join the school, Birsa became a Christian and
was renamed Birsa David, which later became as Birsa Daud.

One day while the
class was going as usual in the German Mission School, a teacher Dr Nottrott
repeatedly used disparaging words for the Mundas. Birsa returned the favor by
criticizing Dr. Nottrott and the missionaries in razor-sharp words eventually
leaving the school in protest.

That was a turning
point in his life as he realized the maxim that saheb, saheb ek topi
hai (all whites, the
British and the missionaries, wear the same cap).

Soon after leaving
school, Birsa and his family left Chaibasa and gave up their membership of the
German mission. As an adolescent, Birsa heard tales of the Munda uprisings
(ulgulaan) of the past and the Sardars (leaders) of the community urging the
people to revolt. The Sardars talked of a golden age when the Mundas were free
from oppression and foretold a time when the ancestral right of the community
would be restored.

They saw themselves as
the descendants of the original settlers of the region, fighting for their
land, and reminding people of the need to win back their kingdom.

Making of a Prophet:

Instead of improving
his life, Birsa realized that his culture was getting destroyed as thousands of
Mundas were being converted.

The colonialist
connection of Christianity was a powerful tool of selling Christianity as the
religion of the downtrodden. Any connection between the rulers and the
missionaries was however indirect.

Around 1890 Birsa went
to Bandgaon and that is where he came in contact with Anand Pandey, who was the
‘Munshi’ of Jagmohan Singh, the zamindar of Bandgaon.

Pandey was well versed
in the principal scriptures of Vaishnavism (as customary in the area) and with the Hindu
epic-lore. Birsa also met a Vaishnav monk who preached there for two months.
From them Birsa learnt a lot about Hindu religious teachings and got the
opportunity to read the Ramayana, Mahabharata and other Hindu scriptures.

He gave up eating
meat, began worshipping the tulsi plant, and wore the sacred thread.

Eventually he started
a new tribal faith known as ‘Birsait‘ which laid stress on prayers, faith in God, observance of a
code of conduct, abstention from alcohol, sacrifices and so on. His movement
was aimed at reforming the tribal society. He urged the Mundas to stop believing
in witchcraft and sorcery. Birsa also wanted people to once again work on their
land and cultivate their fields.

Birsa’s claim to be a
messenger of God and the founder of a new religion sounded preposterous to the
missionaries as his simple system of offering was directed against the church
which levied a tax.

Birsa Munda started to
propagate the principles of Hindu religion and advised converted tribal people
to revert to their original religious system. He also urged the people to
worship cow and opposed cow slaughter. The Mundas, Oraons, and Kharias flocked
to Chalkad to
see the new prophet and to be cured of their ills. Soon both the Oraon and
Munda population in the entire region became devoted ‘Birsaities’. Contemporary
and later folk songs commemorate the tremendous impact of Birsa on his people,
their joy and expectations at his advent. The name of Dharti Aba was on everybody’s lips.

At that period of
history, Mundas were utterly frustrated, disappointed and discontented. They
felt that the Zamindars, moneylenders, Christian missionaries and the British
courts, had only one point program and that was to exploit the Mundas. The
missionaries lured them to become Christians and the others attacked on their
traditional values and socio-economic infrastructure.

First Movement:

Birsa left Chalkad in the wake of the mounting Sardar
agitation. He participated in the agitation stemming from popular disaffection
at the restrictions imposed upon the traditional rights of the Mundas in the
protected forest. During 1893-94 all waste lands in villages, the ownership of
which were vested in the Government, were constituted into protected forests
under the Indian Forest Act VII of 1882. In Chhotanagpur, the forest settlement
operations were launched and measures were taken to determine the rights of the
forest-dwelling communities. These orders were sometimes not understood by
local officers who acted as if all right of forest-dwelling communities had
been curtailed. Petitions were submitted claiming the resumption of what they
called were their old ancestral right to free fuel, grazing etc.

Birsa led a number
of raiyats of
Sirgida to Chaibasa with a petition for the remission of forest dues. Nothing
came of it. The Chotanagpur Protected Forests Rules framed under the Indian
Forest Act came into force in July 1894. Viewing Birsa’s involvement in the
Sardar agitation with concern, Anand Pandey advised him not to let his emotion
overpower him; but he would not turn a deaf ear to the inner voice. Thus his
three years’ association with Pandey came to an end in 1894.

To the twin challenges
of agrarian breakdown and culture change, Birsa and his supporters responded
through a series of revolts and uprisings. The movement sought to assert rights
of the Mundas as the real proprietors of the soil, and the expulsion of
middlemen and the British. While landlords and moneylenders were taking over
their land, and missionaries were ridiculing criticizing their traditional
culture. He recruited volunteers to fight the British Government.

What worried British
officials most was the political aim of the Birsa movement, for it wanted to
drive out the missionaries, moneylenders, landlords and the government
officials and set up a Munda Raj with Birsa as its head. The slogan of the
movement was “The reign of the Queen is over and the Munda Raj had begun.

Even though the Munda
agitation was not an all-India movement, it shared the essence of the national
freedom struggle.

As the movement gained
momentum the British officials became desperate. They spread rumors that on a
particular day the non-believers of ‘Birsaites’ from the region are going to be massacred besides winning
some people over by bribing.

As a result of these manipulations
Birsa was arrested on 24 August 1895.

The British Raj
convicted him on charges of rioting and he suffered rigorous imprisonment for
two years in the Hazaribagh Jail.

The Final Movement:

Birsa was released in
1897, following which he began touring the villages to gather support. The
Christian missionaries were getting desperate as Birsa became the biggest
stumbling block in their path of conversion. So they co-operated with the
colonial officials to get Birsa’s followers arrested. Birsa went into hiding
for two years.

During his period in
hiding he attended a series of secret meetings and practiced the traditional
ritual of throwing arrows on the effigy of Queen Victoria and enemies. By
the end of 1899, local folklore states that Dharti Aba the messiah reappeared with magical powers to
invigorate his followers, the ‘Birsaites’. Birsa Munda’s longtime companion, a
Munda woman Sali was instrumental in organizing the women in the movement.

Birsa gave a clarion
call to the Birsaites of a decisive war against the British Raj. He used
traditional symbols and language to rouse people, urging them to destroy the
British and establish a kingdom under his leadership.

After intensive
preparations, the Birsaites made
a gallant bid to overthrow the British Raj. They raised the white flag as a
symbol of Birsa Raj. The Anglican Mission at Murhu and the Roman Catholic
Mission, at Sarwada was the main target. The Birsaites openly declared that the
real enemies were only the SahebLog (British Officers and Missionary heads) and the
Christian Mundas would not be
touched.

In January 1900, the
entire Munda community was up in arms. During the Revolt of 1899-1900 Birsa
emerged as the supreme leader of the Mundas. After a series of concerted
attacks for nearly two years on strategic the Munda warriors started
congregating on “Dombari Hill” (Nearly 20 Kilometers from the present day
Ranchi-Jamshedpur Highway), on the call of Birsa. They adopted Guerilla war
tactics. They attacked police stations and churches and raided the property of
moneylenders and zamindars. The revolt rocked the British administration to the
extent that the commissioner declared a heavy cash reward for the arrest of
Birsa.

The then commissioner
Mr. A Fobes and Deputy Commissioner Mr. H.C. Streattfield, rushed to Khunti
with heavily armed battalions to crush the Ulgulan (Total Revolt) for “Abua Disun” (Self rule). Subsequently British forces
attacked the Munda warriors congregated at “Dumbari Hill” and made
indiscriminate firing like that of “Jalianwala Bagh” killing several
hundred people. The whole hill was littered with human corpses. But Birsa
somehow managed to escape.

Arrest and Mysterious Death:

He was treacherously
nabbed while asleep at Jamkopai forest in Chakradharpur (Bengal) on 3
March, 1900 and mysteriously died in the jail on 9 June of the same year.

It is said that the
British rulers were actually hesitant to execute him publicly and hence he was
poisoned to death inside the prison. He was not hanged because the British
rulers had no guts to execute him publicly.

Even after decades
have passed Birsa’s birth anniversary which falls on 15 November, is still
celebrated by the tribal people in as far as Mysore and Kodagu districts in
Karnataka,while an official function takes place at his Samadhi Sthal, at Kokar
Ranchi, Jharkhand.The legacy of this brave warrior lives through the war cry of
the Bihar Regiment which is Birsa Munda Ki Jai (Victory to Birsa Munda).

Unfortunately few of
our countrymen know of this valiant freedom fighter but, it is not too late to
propagate the legacy of this great hero who died unsung.

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